Carmelo Anthony faced one of the great conundrums of life — or at least the NBA — last night. His right arm was going in and out of sleep mode, thanks to an elbow injury he sustained in the first quarter. There was pain and there was numbness.

But there also was a need for him to shoot and score. The Knicks, after all. “”had nothing offensively,” in the assessment of coach Mike Woodson.

So Anthony shot a lot. Too bad for the Knicks. Anthony also missed a lot.

“You’re not really thinking about it. You have to be a shooter to realize and recognize that,” Anthony said of his decision to hoist on throughout the stumbling 92-88 loss to the Raptors, who vaulted to within 11 games of .500 with the win. “Shots that normally go in don’t go in. You think the next one’s going to go in. You think the next one after that is going to go in. It’s just one of them nights.”

And it could be one of those weekends. Anthony opened the door that he will skip the All-Star Game in Houston Sunday — when he is scheduled to start for the East — if his arm is not improved.

“I’m not going to force it, definitely not going to force it,” said Anthony who labeled his injury a “deep contusion” suffered while defending against a DeMar DeRozan middle drive. “As bad as I would want to play in the All-Star Game, participate, if I can’t go I can’t go. Nothing I can do about that.”

So the finale before the break became “just a matter of trying to get through it, trying to get some feeling back into it,” Anthony said.

With his injured wing, Anthony endured an offensive game that a Hatfield wouldn’t wish on a McCoy, a Laker wouldn’t wish on a Celtic. He missed 19 of his 24 shots and finished with a mere 12 points, his third worst performance of the season. (He has also had two games of nine points each).

In fairness to Anthony, everybody stunk.

“He got hurt early in the game. He caught an elbow to his bicep,” said teammate J.R. Smith. “He really couldn’t shoot the ball the way he really wanted to and that affected our game because we’re not used to seeing Melo go through slumps like that.”

Woodson seconded the notion.

“It was one of the worst games Melo has played all year,” he said while cutting his star some slack. “He kept acting like he didn’t have feeling in [his arm].”

So for Anthony it was a night of frustration — he even got hit with a technical foul.

“There were a lot of no-calls. I didn’t expect myself to get a tech,” said Anthony, who was T’d up over a previous non-call while teammate Raymond Felton shot free throws. “It was a frustrating night all around.”